The Lebanon express. (Lebanon, Linn County, Or.) 1887-1898, 1887-06-03
LIhcoLN.r CAREER.
The Three Principal Periods of t.ie Great
Stmtesman's Life.

Stmtesmans Life.
We shall see in the course of the
present work how the life of Abraham
Lincoln divides itself into three princi-
pal periods. with corresponding stages
If his intellectual development; the first.
of about forty years, ending with his
term in Congress; the second. of about
ten years. concluding with his final
campaign Of political speech-making In
New York and New England. shortly
before the Presidential nominations of
1860; and the last Of about five years.
terminating ut his death. We have
thus far traced his career through the
irst period of forty years. In the sew
eral stages Of frontier experience
through which he had passed. and
which In the main but repeated the
trials and vieissitudes of thousands
of other boys and youths in
the West. only so much individuality
had been developed in him as brought
him into the leading class of his con-
temporaries. He had risen from
laborer TO student. from clerk TO law
yer. from politician to legislator.
That he had lifted himself by
healthy ambition and unaided i'm
dustrg out of the station of farm
hand whose routine life begins and
ends in back-woods log cabin, to that
representative character and authority
which seated him in the National Cap
itol to aid in framing laws for his conn
try. was already 7 an achievement
that may well be held honorably to
crown a career of forty years.
Such achievement and such distine-
tion, however, were not so uncommon
as to appear phenomenal Hundreds
of other boys. born in log-cabins. had
won similar elevation in the many.
practical schools Of Western public life.
Even in ordinary times there still re-
mained within the reach of average in
telleets several higher grades of public
service. II is quite probable that the
superior talents Of Lincoln would have
made him Governor of Illinois or given
/ him term in the United States Senate.
| But the story of his life would not have
commanded. rs il now does, the un-
| tagging attention of rosteriiv had
| there not fallen upon his generation
the usual conditions and opportunities
brought about by series of re-
markable commissions in National poll
! tics If we would correctly understand
+ how Lincoln became. first conspicu-
ous actor. and then a chosen leader. in
a great strife of National parties for
supremacy and power. we must briefly
study the origin and development OF
the great slavery controversy in Amer
ican legislation which found its high
est activity and decisive elimination in
the single decade from 1850 to 1860.
We should greatly err. however. If VIZ
attributed the new events in Lincoln
career to the caprice Of fortune The
conditions and opportunities of which
we speak were broadly National. and
open To all without restriction of rank
or locality. Many of his contempora-
ries had seemingly overshadowing adj
vantages, by prominence and training,
to seize and appropriate them to theil
own advancement. Ii is precisely thi:
careful study of the times which shows
Us by what inevitable process of Sc
lection honors and 1abors of which h,
did not dream fell upon him; how, in
deed, it was not the individual whit
gained the prize, but the paramount
duty which claimed the man.-Nieola,
aud Hdy. ia Century